Bøker av Carlo Gébler

If the past is another country - what happens when we revisit it, one day a year?Carlo Gébler has done just that. Here is the story of Ireland - from the tail end of the Troubles to the Good Friday agreement, to the glory days of the Celtic Tiger to the recession to Brexit and on to the present, where, it appears, everything we thought we could take for granted is no longer a given.Drawing from journals he has kept for over four decades, Gébler stitches together days of his life into something bigger than his own lived experiences - a vivid patchwork history of the island over thirty-five years, capturing those sweeping changes in sharp, funny, slantwise pieces that will prompt readers to reflect on the strange process of how we got here.This intelligent and affectionate compilation, written in Gébler's sparkling prose, is a joy. Whether read from beginning to end or dipped into, it will appeal to anyone with even a passing interest in the astonishing evolution of our island.

After her father's death in exile, Antigone returns to Thebes determined to set the record straight and restore her father's reputation. Tracing the histories of Oedipus and his parents Laius and Jocasta, as well as the peripheral characters of the plays who had a central role in him fulfilling his destiny, Antigone's 'biography' causes us to re-evaluate the extent to which any of us can be entirely blamed for the actions by which we will be defined. Ending with Antigone making a conscious choice to reclaim her brother's corpse from the battlefield, an act of defiance which will guarantee her own death, the book ultimately meditates on the illusion of free will, and the warning that context is everything, I, ANTIGONE will be a major contribution to the reclaimed classics.

The greatest collection of fables ever written, updated for our turbulent times.

THE SIEGE OF DERRY is one of the key flash points in the troubled history of Ireland and Britain. In 1688 William of Orange had claimed the English throne, forcing the catholic James II to flee to Ireland. From there he hoped to mount his comeback. In December of that year James' troops attempted to take over the protestant city of Derry. To the now-famous cry of 'No Surrender' the apprentice boys closed the city gates to James' army and the 105-day siege begun. The besiegers effectively used cannon and mortar to shell the defenders - with terrifying results - and conditions became desperate as the city began to run out of food. Carlo Gebler's book thrillingly describes both the events leading up to the siege and the heroic struggles within and outside Derry as the five-month battle waged.

The story spans nearly a hundred years. In Carlo Gebler's early childhood, his relationship with his father, Ernest, was a disaster. A man of the left, Ernest's politics had been 'hammered out in the nineteen thirties'. His early life as the son of a Jewish immigrant was spent working as a rat catcher in a cinema, snatching moments alone to educate himself, but the one with the literary talent was his second wife, Edna O'Brien - Gebler's mother - who left after Ernest claimed authorship of her work. As his father saw it, Carlo and his brother Sasha were over-fed members of the bourgeoisie, and toys and sweets were banned from their lonely childhood, filled with memories of abuse and neglect. Years later, on hearing his estranged father was now senile, Gebler made the journey to southern Ireland and through his past, through diaries that confirmed Ernest's hatred for his sons, yet also revealed the abuse Ernest in turn suffered as a young man, a life of extreme poverty and the abandonment of his first wife. This not a story that ends in hate; by the time Carlo Gebler reached their final years together, he no longer felt the anger that had dogged their relationship.